A flight for an aerial vehicle begins with the filing of a flight plan that outlines the route for the flight. In particular, the flight plan can include an origination and destination location and times as well as intermediate routing information that define an airway or flight path. Airways can be considered three-dimensional highways and can be defined with a set of intermediate waypoints. The set of intermediate waypoints can be considered reference locations in physical space. As such, the set of intermediate waypoints can be used for purposes of navigation and typically include a latitude, longitude and altitude. While navigating a flight plan, the aerial vehicle flies a path or trajectory that traverses the set of waypoints in a sequenced order in time. Hence, the flight path actually flown by the aerial vehicle is referred to as a four-dimensional trajectory having three spatial coordinates and one temporal coordinate.
As civil aviation authorities, such as the FAA, strive for better airspace efficiency, four-dimensional trajectories are becoming increasingly important. However, the four-dimensional trajectories generated by a flight management system of the aerial vehicle are subject to a number of uncertainties (e.g., weather conditions). As such, trajectory based operations (TBO) in which flight clearances are based on trajectories cannot accurately rely upon four-dimensional trajectories computed by the flight management system.